Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has called for the immediate and unconditional release of Ma Thuzar, a journalist held arbitrarily since her arrest for no clear reason in Yangon a week ago after four months in hiding.

Her family and colleagues spent five days without any news of her after she was snatched by police as she left her home on the morning of 1 September.

The police finally confirmed on 5 September that she had been arrested, but they have yet to give the judicial grounds for her arrest or say where she is being held.

Ma Thuzar, who worked for the Myanmar Pressphoto Agency and the Friday Times-News Journal, told RSF before her arrest that she filmed many of the major street protests that were triggered by the military coup on 1 February.

It was partly as a result of her videos, broadcast live on the Friday Times’s online networks, that this media outlet was closed on 16 April.